


Lisa Doing Something to Show Her Parental Love for Aiden

by TheCauldronDiscord



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29800998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCauldronDiscord/pseuds/TheCauldronDiscord
Summary: A fic written for the Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon event, Fic Valentines, in February 2021, based on the prompt "Lisa doing something to show her parental love for Aiden." This was written for Giles_the_Writer by an author who wishes to remain anonymous.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28
Collections: The Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon





	Lisa Doing Something to Show Her Parental Love for Aiden

**Author's Note:**

> (Despite the event being titled Fic Valentines, non-romantic forms of love were also permitted.)

A biting cold had sneaked in through the windows at some point late in the night, spiteful enough that a thin blanket of frost had draped itself over everything in sight. As she wrinkled her nose, Lisa felt her eyebrows crack like thin sheets of glass. Little crystals of ice crumbled off her face like dry skin. Lovely. 

Her power was desperate to investigate the whys and hows of how this had happened like a dog slamming itself against the bars of its cage, but Lisa kept its confinement firm. No point driving more spikes into her skull for the sake of the world’s most inane mystery. 

Irrelevant, anyway.

She pulled her heavy blanket over her head, curling into a ball and making herself small as possible, trying to contain the body-wracking shivers. The logical thing to do would be to go find out how the cold had got in, but she was feeling lazy. Yesterday had been a long day, searching through the rubble of the city, rebuilding, coordinating, and generally doing what the leader of a major parahuman faction was supposed to do in the aftermath of the second apocalypse. Her head was still throbbing like a stubbed toe, and all she wanted to do was get back to sleep.

Easier said than done, of course, for more reason than one. The cold didn’t help. The ticking clock seemed more like it was inside her skull than hanging just above the second bed at the other end of the room. The occupant of said bed was another reason, a little man who had a gravity all his own, inexorably drawing her thoughts to him.

She knew Aiden hated the cold, far more than she did. It was an unspoken phobia that went years back, all the way to the day of his trigger event, when he’d found himself alone in the cold in an unfamiliar place. Ever since, lower temperatures had been an enemy and a tormentor, haunting his dreams as much as it knocked him off balance in his waking moments. There were jokes to be made about birds and how they tended not to mesh well with the winter, but Lisa was too tired to think of them. Maybe that wasn’t true anyway.

She didn’t know if a minute or an hour had passed, but eventually her whirling thoughts drew her to her feet, though she grumbled under her breath the entire way. Moonlight peeped through the gaps in the blinds, kind enough to point out a path for her, and Lisa picked her way around the boxes strewn across the floor. Most of them were still enclosed with too much tape, but the labels reading things like ‘clothes’ marked them as low priority. They’d be unpacked eventually.

Lisa made her way to Aiden’s bed, teeth chattering and feet going more and more numb with every step, then stared down at him. He was shivering.

A sigh escaped her before she could think to stop it. 

There had been a time, once upon a time, a time that felt like it had happened in a different lifetime, that she had found herself doing the very same thing to another parahuman of the master persuasion. A mother figure of Aiden’s, if you looked at it in a weird way. Taylor had been a light sleeper, owing to the immense stress they’d been going through in their brief time together as much as the local clairvoyance her bugs bestowed upon her. Still, Lisa had managed to creep close, and she’d spent an indeterminate amount of time watching the Great Warlord Skitter mewl for her father in her sleep.

At moments like this, she couldn’t help comparing her erstwhile teammate and the boy before her. Both masters controlling non-human minions, of course. Both people who sought control, as masters were wont to do. And… the more she thoughts about it, the more it became obvious how different they were after all. Aiden was a thoughtful little guy, as well-adjusted as a naturally triggered cape could hope to be. Taylor… not so much.

The most obvious difference, of course, was that Aiden called for his mother. The woman whose face he could barely remember. He’d been one of the kids orphaned by Mannequin’s rampage, back in Bet’s Brockton Bay, and Taylor had taken him in, crushingly guilty and blaming herself for their circumstances. She hadn’t actually taken care of them herself, of course—no, that job was pawned off on Charlotte and Forest, not that the couple minded.

Lisa  _ did _ mind when the responsibility of taking care of a tween parahuman ended up in her lap. 

Somewhere along the way—quite a long time ago, actually—it had stopped being a bother.

_ Huh. _

Aiden twisted in his sleep, flipping over so he was facing her. His eyes were still closed, framed by thin eyebrows clutching little diamonds of ice that glinted in the moonlight. He mumbled something, and Lisa was pretty sure it was her name.

“Emotionally manipulating me while you’re still asleep?” Lisa mumbled, scowling. “You spoilt brat.”

Even as she spoke, she was bucking her blanket off her shoulders. It was only halfway down her arms before she aborted the thought of throwing it over Aiden and going to find another. The icy air attacked without mercy the moment her body was defenceless, stealing under her clothes to dig claws of frost into her skin. Shivers wracked her body, and her teeth chattered so hard she half worried they might shatter. 

A gaze over her shoulder, back at her own bed, longing.

A look back down at the precocious little tyke who’d managed to cluck and tweet and flutter his way into her heart.

With a sigh, Lisa reached down to pinch the edge of Aiden’s blanket, then lifted it. Manoeuvring herself into the gap between Aiden and the end of the bed was no easy feat, but she managed it. Throwing her own blanket over the two of them, doubling their resources against the shrewd cold, was harder, but it had to be done. Aiden clung to her the moment she was in, and her breath hitched. 

For the first time since she’d woke, she allowed her power to batter down the gate, and her head filled with information.

_ Movement of eyes beneath eyelids. Automatic function. Still asleep. Deep sleeper. Dreaming. Was having a nightmare, but not any longer. Comforted by new presence. Comforted by Tattletale-self.  _

Aiden’s mouth moved, his throat vibrated, breath passed his lips, and a single word carried to Lisa’s ears, quiet enough she wasn’t sure she was imagining it.

“Mom.”

Aiden’s shivering and fidgeting faded, aside from a little bit of wriggling himself closer to her, subconsciously seeking out her extra body heat. They curled up there together, and time passed.

Lisa felt warmer than she had in a long time.

~~~


End file.
